02 October 2009

they should call this place the windy city

copenhagen is going ballistic right now. the city is hosting the olympic congress, where they (who "they" are, i don't know) will decide - today - where the 2016 olympics will be held. oprah and the obamas are in town to support chicago's bid, and basically all that's been on the news for the past couple of days has been the obamas this, the obamas that - with a few pauses for oprah, and, of course, the other international celebrities who are in town supporting their cities' bids: pele, the king of spain, some important people from brasil and japan. most of the celebrities went to the opera house last night; the queen was there with her family, too. anyway, the media is ridiculously focused on the obamas, more so than the eventually upcoming olympics. i guess it's a good thing that the world loves our president, but i'm a little bit embarrassed to be american. i'm from california, i really don't know anything about illinois, and i don't care where the 2016 olympics are. if anything, it would be a cool reason to go to rio.

back to copenhagen. i guess oprah was downtown on strøget (copenhagen's main walking/shopping street) on wednesday, and i think most of copenhagen - well, at least all the americans i know - are wondering exactly how and where the obamas can be found. my friend nina was actually not allowed into her school yesterday; the police had blocked the area off because it was close to the opera house, where all the celebrities and royalty were to be later in the evening. copenhagen is usually a very chill city, so this is quite the change of pace.

copenhagen has suddenly gotten cold. i went out to go for a run yesterday morning. i think it was between 45 and 50 degrees fahrenheit, and i was just in leggings and a t-shirt. the wind was really nice once i got warmed up, but my hands were freezing for the first ten minutes i was outside. the weather shift is affecting me (and some of my friends) physically; i've been really tired and sluggish for the past few days and i can't really think of any good reasons to go outside except for trips to the grocery store for cookie ingredients, because all i want to do is stay inside, get cozy, and bake. in fact, yesterday afternoon, my friend allie came over, and that's exactly what we did. we made delicious chocolate chunk (as chocolate chips are nowhere to be found) cookies, and didn't even get sick from all the dough we ate, despite my flatmate yelling at us, "don't eat the dough! it has raw eggs!" to which we were like, no big deal. as it it turns out, danish eggs aren't pasturized. but we're fine. no salmonella, no swine flu.

and one last thing: i cut most of my hair off! it feels really good to be able to touch my scalp again.

5 comments:

Hmmm. Bad timing on cutting your hair, with all the cold wind. Brr. I just bought a cap to go under my bike helmet. I decided if I am going to keep biking as the weather cools off I need something to keep my ears warm.

Across the sound, Obama is in all the news as well (in other words, the free newspapers, my only source) and the Öresund bridge from Sweden to Denmark was also closed off for security purposes. Interesting to think we are probably physically the closest to our president we will ever be, not that we will see him as he is whisked between appointments.

I think Scandinavian eggs are relatively safe as they do not feed prophylactic antibiotics to their livestock, so they have not developed resistant bacteria as the US animals have.